Whether through intellect or how children are taught, most people view everything in a binary yes/no, good/evil paradigm.

How I view things is through strength of belief or strength of disbelief. This means I can read new information, which can shift the strength of my belief. In this continuum of strength of belief there can never be 100% belief or disbelief. I also never face the ego issue men have of admitting they are wrong. I am telling people what I believe, and it is based on my logic, the information I have seen, etc., I am not saying I have a monopoly on the truth.

With some story like the Soviet Union landing a robotic rover on Venus in the 1970's, I 'believed' it in the sense that I had never really thought about it, it was just some factoid in some textbook. Lets call it 51% belief. Would I put $20,000 bet that i was right? No, if there was any consequence whatsoever to me, I would have to look into greater detail, and use some of my own logic to test this factoid. Even if I did that diligence, and I was 90% sure that they did do it, I would bet the $20,000, but still be prepared to lose my bet.

As I got older, and had read and thought much more about the world, the story seemed less and less plausible. So my 51% belief, quickly fell into the disbelieving side. And the more points raised here, like how would the rocket 'push' in space, is there even any evidence that a rocket can get into space in the first place, the Soviet Union's primitive technology, the Soviet Union lying about practically everything.. it gets into like .0001% belief.

So if someone asked me, do you believe in the Russian Venus robot story, my answer is, no I do not. But then they say, well you cannot prove beyond all doubt that the Soviet Union didn't do that. Thats true I can't prove a negative. The Soviet Union might have been in contact with legal aliens who let them borrow a space probe, utilizing advanced technology and land to Venus. Its possible - but a reasonable person wouldn't think that the most likely or even a remotely likely scenario. A far more likely scenario is the Soviet Union simply lied again.

I simply don't need to 'disprove' something beyond all doubt, to another person, in order for me to believe what I believe. That other person no matter how many credentials, isn't the judge/jury of absolute truth. I cannot control what another person thinks. But if they become stubbornly stuck in child like beliefs, then it becomes boring for me to talk to them.

This is an excellent idea and with good timing as well, since I actually just linked to it on one of my Reddit posts. I thought it would perfectly help me get a point across.

I also wanted to share a gem I found on researching the Soviet Union Venera Probe (hadn't heard about it until now, actually.) If you desire extra information in order to adjust your "belief percentage" of the Venera below 0.0001%, here you go:

See that picture on the right? Do you see that big chunk of semi-circular metal in the middle? That's a lens cap. It protects the camera from the Lovecraftian hell that is Venus' atmosphere during the decent. Once the probe lands it pops off so the camera can take a few pictures before being destroyed by the weather.

The Russians had a huge number of problems with those caps; they wouldn't come off. They sent a bunch of probes to Venus that had issues with those lens caps failing to work.

See that picture on the left? Do you see that extended arm-like thing? Once the probe has landed, that arm extends so it touches the ground and gets details of what the surface of Venus is composed of.

Do you see what it's sitting on? That's right. The lens cap.

They finally got the lens cap to come off successfully and it fell in exactly the spot where their surface instrument was supposed to go.

All that instrument did was send back to Russia information about the composition of their own lens cap.

And, of course, this bright individual recast the story from wickedpedia:

The Venera 9 and 10 landers had two cameras each. Only one functioned because the lens covers failed to separate from the second camera on each lander. The design was changed for Venera 11 and 12, but this change made the problem worse and all cameras failed on those missions. Venera 13 and 14 were the only landers on which all cameras worked properly; although unfortunately, the titanium lens cap on Venera 14 landed precisely on the area which was targeted by the soil compression probe.

Pretty funny, no? In short, I suppose if the probe was fake (and my belief percentage is very high that is was, along with all other "space probes",) the Soviet Union chose not to gamble with faking a surface composition. Clearly, this would be an easy way out.

This thread is the crux of why people are so easy to (mis)lead. Belief & Duality (or binary as you said).

It goes along with computer programming in that the human is programmed much like binary computing. Things get boiled down to an either/or situation for most people because of the way we are taught. We are taught to believe from day one but what lacks is your sliding scale of believability. I've tried to shed belief from my own life but I like the way you have dealt with it. It's acknowledged, much like the ego, but it isn't given full reins to run the show.

That is what most people suffer from. First, they don't realize or won't acknowledge even the possiblitily that they have been programmed. They will defend TV as entertainment without ever understanding the tech behind it designed to entrain brain frequency and influence future behavior. Second, the programming is what I call "belief-level programming" where people live out a life that results from their belief structure. The religous type will believe in their faith and it will tend to carry them throughout life, much like using an oracle, or tarot. It's the belief that is important as that is what leads to actions. Third, the duality programming (binary) leaves no out. It's designed so you have to pick a side. We are seeing the absurd results of this in the US election, a polarity so bizarre that I'd rather see pretty much anyone I know as a better, more trustworthy option. So someone who goes their own way and leaves the societal programming is easily labeled and judged as a heretic or whatever. This entire structure, the belief-level programming is so built in to current (and most likely past) societies that the result is continual upheaval and chaos. The logic of it all goes so far out the window because it's ALL based on belief. When people defend their beliefs and faiths using their own belief structure as their fact bin, any attempt to circumvent their firewall results in a label/judging/boxing in. Otherwise the program will crash. The believer is not equipped nor trained to question the basic operating system (belief structure). Nice people just say, "Well, I'm too busy with work and life to go there." It takes a crashing of the system (rock-bottom experience) or some other mental trauma, blow or enlightenment to cause the person to re-program, re-wire, self-program.

Anyhow, I didn't expect to write this stuff today but it's been simmering for awhile. But I'm glad the topic's been broached. I think there is a science to this programming and it involves language and harmonics including music and voicings that entrain a person to cause them to focus on what is being delivered. I think of music and soundtracks that are laid into newsreels, documentaries and news stories. I also think that the science involves somehow using the energy of groups in some way, through their focus and beliefs, to cause a reaction and other possible outcomes such as policy, war and whatever.

I was hoping this strength of belief is how educated people think about the world, but I live in a big government city, where everyone has bachelor's & master's degrees, and they view the world in this duality of extremes. Eg.. their belief that bigger government is a good idea 100% of the time, regardless of how big and bloated the government already is.

One memorable discussion I had with fairly senior government managers, was about nursing compensation levels which there was a nursing strike(they were managers not in health care). They were all saying nursing is a hard job and deserves more money. When I joined the conversation, I asked how much nurses make now, which I actually knew the answer to, but I wanted to see if they knew. None of them had any idea what nurses made. So I asked, how can I as a voter decide whether they should make more, if I do not know how much they make now? And one lady asked, but consider how uncomfortable some of their work is, they deserve a raise.

Many, many people have never been exposed to situation dependent opinions. Everyone they know, their teachers at school, and their first love who they spend the most time with, their beloved television - never presents thinking about the world this way.

One that kills me is this argument they don't have time to become educated about the world even slightly. Ok, the average American spends 4 hours a day watching the teevee, so that is flat out wrong. Secondly if they are ignorant about the world as they say - then how the hell do they have such strong opinions on everything.

I will say when you get into the Phd science fields, especially biology/chemistry related they actually have appreciation of statistical strength of 'belief'. They might not have applied it outside of their scientific field, but they do understand it. In biotech they learn the hard way, having new drugs that show promise in investigational studies, then go down in flames in placebo controlled, double blind studies.

For the powers that be, this strength of belief is about the last thing they want. They want unthinking zealots, who when they tell them to go over the trench and kill other men, the 'bad' guys, the zealot does it, period. Its like the deeper the person goes into this false belief system, the more traumatic it is going to be to get out of it. Many would rather go over the trench and get torn apart, then face that emotional pain, and that isn't even going into ego. Its probably why it is people who have hit rock bottom, and had to go through the pain and shame of defeat anyway, can come out the other side so much stronger.

aa5 » October 15th, 2016, 2:13 pm wrote:Secondly if they are ignorant about the world as they say - then how the hell do they have such strong opinions on everything.

That´s not really surprising. Remember the saying: "the more one knows about something, the harder it is to have an opinion"? Turning it around we get: "the stronger someone´s opinion about something is, the more ignorant they probably are."